How do you move furniture?

I’m not talking about a sofa or a table. I’m speaking of people who have been in the same job for 20+ years and have no motivation to strive to achieve anything better than what they had 20 years ago.

How do you get them past a small mindset to help achieve something for the benefit of a larger group? If you aren’t in a position to flat our fire them, I see only a few of options.

#1. Be the Colorado RiverThis can be the most frustrating approach as it requires extensive time and even more patience. Both of which you may not have ample supplies. Over time, and staying consistent and true to your methodologies, you can eventually wear down the furniture in your organization. At the very least, you can etch a path around the furniture to isolate them from negatively impacting the vision.

#2. Work with ManagementIn a healthy organization, management should be able to see, and respond to, inefficiencies and laziness in the organization including within their own management ranks. That isn’t to say they will always see what is going on. If you keep stubbing your toe against that table leg and the table is too affixed to the floor for you to move, then the best you can hope for is to share with management and see if they can nudge the table.

#3. Move OnThis can be the scariest option and the one which will have the greatest direct impact on you. It is also difficult to determine exactly when to employ this option. If you don’t care to wait to form the grand canyon and management consistently fails, then evaluate your options.

#4. Become a SofaNone of the previous choices stand out to you? Then there is always the option to become a piece of furniture yourself. Just know that you won’t have any control over what type of assholes end up sitting on you.